The new man will be earthly

The new man will be earthly. And by 'earthly' I don't mean materialistic. The new man will be a realist. He will love this earth. Because we have not loved this earth and our so-called religions have been teaching us to hate this earth, we have destroyed it. It is a beautiful planet, one of the most beautiful, because one of the most alive. This planet has to be loved, this planet has to be rejoiced in. It is a gift. This body has so many mysteries in it that even a Buddha is possible only because of this body. This body becomes the temple of the greatest possibility: Buddhahood, nirvana. This body has to be loved. This earth has to be loved.

The new man will find his religion in nature -- not in dead stone statues, but in living dancing trees in the wind. He will find his religion surfing on the sea, climbing on the virgin mountain. He will find his prayer with the snow, with the moon, with the stars. He will be in dialogue with existence as it is. He will not live with abstract ideas, he will live with realities. His commitment will be to nature, and through that commitment he will come to know super-nature. God is hidden here in this earth, in this very body. This very body, the Buddha. This very earth, the paradise.

The new man will read the scripture of nature. This will be his Veda, his Koran, his Bible. Here he will find sermons in the stones. He will try to decipher the mysteries of life, he will not try to demystify life. He will try to love those mysteries, to enter in those mysteries. He will be a poet, he will not be a philosopher. He will be an artist, he will not be a theologian. His science will also have a different tone. His science will be that of Tao, not an effort to conquer nature, because that effort is just foolish. How can you conquer nature? -- you are part of nature. His science will be of understanding nature, not of conquering nature. He will not rape nature, he will love and persuade nature to reveal its secrets.

The new man will not be ambitious, will not be political.
Politics has no future; politics has existed because of the neurosis of humankind. Once the neurosis disappears, politics will disappear. Ambition simply means you are missing something and you are consoling yourself that you will get it in the future. Ambition is a consolation. Today it is all misery, tomorrow there will be joy. Looking at tomorrow you become capable of tolerating today and its misery: today is always hell, tomorrow is heaven. You keep on looking at heaven, you keep on hoping.

But that hope is not going to be fulfilled ever because tomorrow never comes. Ambition means you are incapable of transforming your today into a beatitude; you are impotent. Only impotent people are ambitious: they seek money, they seek power. Only impotent people seek power and money. The potential person lives. If money comes his way, he lives the money too, but he does not seek it, he is not after it. He is not afraid of it either.

The old man was either after money or afraid of money, either after power or afraid of power; but in both ways his whole focus was on power and money. He was ambitious. The old man is pitiable. He was ambitious because he was unable to live, unable to love. The new man will be able to live and able to love. And his herenow is going to be so beautiful, why should he be worried about tomorrow? His concern will not be with having more, his concern will be with BEING more -- another very important distinction to be remembered. His concern will be with being more, not having more. Having more is just a substitute for being more. You have more money, so you think you are more. You have more power, so you think you are more. Deep down you remain the same beggar.
Alexander dies as empty-handed as any beggar.

Being more is a totally different dimension. Being more means getting in touch with your reality, getting in tune with your being, and helping yourself to fall in harmony with the universe. To be in harmony with the universe you become more. The more you are in tune with existence, the more you are. If the harmony is total, you are a god. That's why we call Buddha a god, Mahavira a god -- utter total harmony with existence, no conflict at all. They have dissolved themselves into the whole, they have become the whole -- just as a dewdrop disappears into the ocean and becomes the ocean. They have died in their egos, now they live as existence itself.

The new man will have no use for sham, facade or pretense, he will be true, because only through truth is there liberation. All lies create bondages.

OSHO
The Secret of Secrets….Vol-1…# 14

Light up the Fire

I gaze into the heart, lowly it may be,
Thought the words be higher still.
For the heart is all the substance,
The speech an accident.
How many phrases will you speak,
Too many for me.
How much burning, burning will you feel,
Be friendly with the fire, enough for me.
Light up the fire of love inside,
And blaze the thoughts away.

- Rumi

From The Love Poems of Rumi by Philip Dunn

The Temple of Love

The temple of love is not love itself;
True love is the treasure,
Not the walls about it.
Do not admire the decoration,
But involve yourself in the essence,
The perfume that invades and touches you-
The beginning and the end.
Discovered, this replace all else,
The apparent and the unknowable.
Time and space are slaves to this presence.

- Rumi


From The Love Poems of Rumi by Philip Dunn

Defeated by Love

The sky was lit
by the splendor of the moon

So powerful
I fell to the ground

Your love
has made me sure

I am ready to forsake
this worldly life
and surrender
to the magnificence
of your Being.

- Rumi

from 'Love Poems of Rumi' by Deepak Chopra
Translated by: Fereydoun Kia

Love poems from God

LOVE IS THE CURE

Love is the cure,
for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love
as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.


WITH PASSION

With
passion pray. With
passion work. With passion make love.

With passion eat and drink and dance and play.

Why look like a dead fish
in this ocean
of
God?

From 'Love poems from God' by Rumi
translated by Daniel Ladinsky

O Love

O Love, O pure deep Love, be here, be now,
Be all – worlds dissolve into your
stainless endless radiance,
Frail living leaves burn with your brighter
than cold stares –
Make me your servant, your breath, your core.

From: Perfume of the Desert - Andrew Harvey – Inspirations from Sufi Wisdom

The Meaning of Love by Rumi

Both light and shadow
are the dance of Love.

Love has no cause;
it is the astrolabe of God’s secrets.

Lover and Loving are inseparable
and timeless.

Although I may try to describe Love
when I experience it I am speechless.

Although I may try to write about Love
I am rendered helpless;
my pen breaks and the paper slips away
at the ineffable place
where Lover, Loving and Loved are one.

Every moment is made glorious
by the light of Love.

- Rumi

from 'Love Poems of Rumi' by Deepak Chopra

Translated by: Fereydoun Kia

A song sung in silence

In the fragrant spaces of my soul,
is that you who stirs, Oh Silent One.
In the vast immensity of my soul,
is that your footfall I hear, Oh Silent One.
Is that your hand that strums my soul-strings
and sets them aquiver.
Is that your whisper that transforms my soul
into one unending melody.

The lamp that you lit with your love
is now a conflagration.
The note that you whispered in my soul
is now a symphony.
And so it flows from life to life
until it finally meets the mighty sea.
Therein it shall lose itself,
therein it shall forever be.

Love

Love is nothing but oneness. All barriers, boundaries, differences, separateness are created by the ego-mind. No such thing exists. When all barriers come down, when boundaries disappear, differences melt, and when one no longer feels separate from the loved one, but one, that is love. The body doesn’t figure in this, neither the mind, nor the emotions. It is not an emotional state but the state of pure being. There is no ‘you’ or ‘I’ or ‘us’. Even one’s identity disappears, not that it merges with the other’s. The identity itself which is a mind-creation disappears and we see ourselves revealed in our true state. There is surrender, bliss, union. This is love.

However, it is extremely difficult to remain in this state of oneness and freedom all the time. Interacting in the world puts us in the state of fear, instantly creating barriers between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and instantly cutting off our awareness of our inner self, our source of love. During such moments it helps to step back from the mind and remain in awareness of what is going on. To see the fear for what it is, a mere mind-construction, a trick of the ego, to see how it is creating separateness and division. And how it disconnects us from our own self.

But most of us have in our lives have experienced rare moments of total trusting surrender whether it be in relation to a close loved one or in relation with what we call God. The Sufi mystic Rumi found his beloved in his friend Shams of whom he wrote after Shams’ death

Why should I seek? I am the same as
He. His essence speaks through me.
I have been looking for myself!

The symbolic union of Radha with Lord Krishna epitomises the merging with God. The bliss that she feels upon her union is as fervent as the pining for that state when she is not in the presence of the Lord. Truly, once we have experienced that oneness with the beloved then it is always our fervent desire to return to that state of love. In such moments we are able to let go of our fear, transcend the mind and come home to our own loving self. When we become one with the beloved, we become one with the whole universe. We stand revealed as divine, yes, truly, we stand revealed as God.

An ode to trees

- a beautiful poem by Mara Freeman

A ninefold blessing of the sacred grove
Now be upon all forests of Earth:
For willow of the streams,
Hazel of the rocks,
Alder of the marshes,
Birch of the waterfalls,
Ash of the shade,
Yew of resilience,
Elm of the brae,
Oak of the sun,
And all trees that grow and live and breathe
On hill and brake and glen:

No axe, no saw, no fire shall harm you,
No mind of ownership shall seize you,
No hand of greed or profit claim you.
But grace of the stepping deer among you,
Strength of the rooting boar beneath you,
Power of the gliding hawk above you.

Deep peace of the running stream through your roots,
Deep peace of the flowing air in your boughs,
Deep peace of the shining stars on your leaves,

That the harp of the woods be heard once more
Throughout the green and living Earth.

Surrender

Some time ago my friend Rukmini and I was talking about the subject of ‘surrender’. She said in Sanskrit it is called ‘saranagati’ and a shining example is when the great monkey god Hanuman prostrates in front of Lord Ram and surrenders to him. I remember the recollection of this had moved her to tears.

Thereafter, I’ve often thought about this thing called surrender. What does it mean by surrendering to God. Most of us think of ‘God’ as an external entity who is greater than us, above and beyond us and to whose divine and implacable will we have to surrender our will. Bt doing so somehow takes all the power away from us and turns us into a weak puppet whose strings are held by this omnipotent God. But the Advaita concept of “aham brahmasmi’ or Jesus’ teaching that the kingdom of God is within us contradicts the concept of an external powerful God surrendering to whose iron will renders us impotent.

Recently, while reading some spiritual teachings I came upon a passage that said just ‘God is not some external being, God is the God-consciousness that exists in all of us’. The book said ‘Christ-consciousness’ but we can call it ‘Krishna-consciousness’ or ‘Buddha-consciousness’ or ‘Allah-consciousness’ (the words themselves don’t mean anything). When I meditated on this, it all became clear to me.

All of us have an egoic self, a false self that we have built over the years, by adding layer upon layer of personality, a shell we have woven around ourselves, a shell that exists only in our minds. Unfortunately, for most of the time we are identified with this false egoic self. We believe it to be our real self, so much so that we guard it, protect it and go to great lengths to keep it intact. But if we ever slip into a state of awareness, we will be able to see that this self is just a chimera, a fabrication, a totally made-up entity and if we remain in that awareness, we can see the falseness for what it is and it begins to fade or diminish in importance and leave the centre-stage.

At the same time we can become aware of a subtle presence, a deep silence, a gentle joyous presence, a deep wisdom, so full of love, energy and knowing. This is god or rather the god-consciousness within us. This is our true self. And saranagati occurs when our egoic self surrenders to our true self, the god within us. Because the egoic self has fallen away, all fears and doubts also fall away, together with hatred, envy, pain, desire, attachment, because all of these belong to the false self.

The image of Hanuman surrendering to Lord Ram is a powerful symbolism for our monkey-mind surrendering to our divine self. Total surrender to our own god-nature is indeed powerful, liberating and essential. That is the only way we can find ourselves and be our true self. This is the only way we can be free. Like Jesus said, ‘Seek ye the truth, for the truth shall set you free.’ The truth lies nowhere but within ourself.

Know yourself...

Know yourself as the spirit, for you are nothing but the spirit. Everything else is a story you have made up by yourself...

A fragment of a dream

A terse dream this was,
broken, anguished, blurred,
of which a fragment remains
in my memory, embedded.

A wayward bullet strikes
at lightening speed your chest,
passing through it spears,
calmly, through my breast.

Locked in a gaze we stand,
as love flows out the wounds.
Caught tight in death’s hand
as the dream softly fades.

On waking, for long I ponder;
did our souls our bodies flee
at the same moment, together?
Did they merge to become free?

Did pain set our insides afire?
Is sorrow the bullet that incinerates,
torching our ignorance, our desire,
and into freedom thus liberates?

Journeying, on trains .....

Have you noticed that life is like a train journey. When it begins you get into the train. You have all these co-passengers who are already sitting there and those who get in with you. Then as the train keeps moving, people get off, along the way other people get in. You get to know the people sitting around you, you are oblivious of the people in other compartments except when you catch brief glimpses of them at stations. And so it goes on, people get in and get off, some stay briefly, some stay for long periods, and with each you have a unique experience. You learn, you give and take, you laugh, fight, make up, part. Eventually you get off at some station. You are richer in experience, wiser. You have learnt a lot. If there is more experience to be had, more lessons to be learnt, you get into another train. And so it begins again. Another train, another journey. You keep doing this until perhaps you’ve learnt that you are the train, the journey, the stations, the co-passengers and everything else. Then there will be nothing more to be learnt, then no train can contain you, for you will have encompassed all and will find yourself in everything. This will not be the end of all journeys or the beginning of a new one because beginnings and endings belong to time and you will be beyond time. You will have realised that you are timeless, limitless and infinite.

Beginnings and endings

Have you noticed that every moment dies as soon as it is born? Have you noticed that life is a series of beginnings and endings? That everything that begins has to end someday? Everything, yes, EVERYTHING! Without exception. Things begin to die as soon as they spring up. Life is simultaneously a living and a dying. Then why do we cling? If everything is in transition, why do we get attached? I guess we don’t see the impermanence. We look at a flower and admire its beauty, drink in its delicateness, are touched by its fragility, moved by its sheer splendour. Yet at the back of our minds we are aware that this same flower will wilt by the next day and turn into a heap of brown shriveled petals in a few days. Maybe it’s this knowledge that makes us rejoice in its beauty for a brief, glorious, uplifting moment. Maybe we should look at every moment like that, see the transience of it, its temporariness, maybe then we can live life open-fisted, without holding on to anything. Maybe then we can rejoice in the fullness of every moment, participate in the beauty of it. And then let it go. Because a new moment has already arisen. It is said that in the spirit world there is no Time, everything happens in the Now. There is no memory, hence no past, there is no imagination, hence no future. There is only the now which is eternal. Maybe we should live as eternal spirit. Maybe then we can be free of attachment, of desire, of suffering. Maybe then we can be free as we were meant to be, or rather as we really are.

Ruminations

~ I am a powerful magnet
for love - because waves of love is what I am sending out
for abundance - because the Universe is in a state of abundance
for joy - because that is my real state.


~ Let’s float free in the magical, pulsating, swirling, interconnected matrix of energy. Let’s live borderless, unfettered, limitless (borders, fetters and limits exist only in the mind). Know in the depths of your being that you are infinite, free and divine.

(It would be good to affirm this on a daily basis, or even hourly :))


~ Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with a racing mind. Thoughts stumble fast and furious into my mindscape and scamper around in circles. For hours. A quiet, sane voice reminds me softly that I must drop my mind and stop thinking, but I go on restlessly, tossing and turning under the covers until finally my mind drops off exhausted. Usually by this time, the sun’s just sending out its first rays and I drop off into a fitful doze. But something happens during this doze. Like the sun breaking through the mists of the night, dispensing the darkness and rising bright and resplendent, when I wake up, my mind is clear and sunny, all the demons of the night vanquished, my mind still and my heart at peace and my spirit shining clear and strong. Like they say, ‘the morning after the blackest night is the brightest’.

The rainbow tree

--- I got this as an email forward but I liked it so much I decided to post it here ---





As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let you down probably will.

You will have your heart broken probably more than once and it's harder every time. You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt when yours was broken.

You'll fight with your best friend.

You'll blame a new love for things an old one did.

You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and you'll eventually lose someone you love.

So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you've never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you'll never get back.

Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.

Doorway to Now

A very powerful commentary about the impermanence of the past and the immortality of the Now.

Watch the video

God and Dog

Lovely little video!

Watch it here


:))))

Thought for the day

It is a most difficult thing to give up is the clinging to this universe; few ever attain to that. There are two ways to do that: one way is called neti neti ("not this, not this"), the other is called iti iti ("this, this"). The former is the negative, the latter is the positive way.

The negative way is the most difficult. It is only possible to people of the very highest, exceptional minds and gigantic wills who simply stand up and say, "No, I will not have this," and the mind and body obey their will, and they come out successful. But such people are rare.

The vast majority choose the positive way, the way through the world, making use of all the bondages themselves to break those very bondages. This is also a kind of giving up; only it is done slowly and gradually, by knowing things, enjoying things and thus obtaining experience, and knowing the nature of things until the mind lets them all go at last and becomes unattached.

The former way of obtaining non-attachment is by reasoning, and the latter way is through work and experience. The first is the path of Jñāna Yoga, the second is that of Karma Yoga.

- Swami Vivekananda